


of broken equations and functional men

by WeAreTomorrow



Category: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Angst, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-02-08
Updated: 2013-04-05
Packaged: 2017-11-28 15:43:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/676091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WeAreTomorrow/pseuds/WeAreTomorrow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is Tony before Ironman. And then there is isn’t.</p><p>Rip the glowing, robot heart out of him and the simple fact remains: he will die.</p><p>He doesn’t know how to fit Pepper into this newest calculation, how to rewrite the formula for the old solution when the elements are so fundamentally different. Fact is, she fell in love with only half the equation.</p><p>(Eventual Tony/Steve.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. part one

XXX

part one

XXX

There is Tony before Pepper. Then there is TonyandPepper.

 

It’s good, being them without spaces. He’s always surrounded by them—spaces.

 

The consequence of being rich, then of being smarter then all the other rich kids. It’s part of being an only child, and then an orphan. It comes with the fame and the trust fund and, of course, the college diplomas.

 

And yet, always, there is space between Armani leather and his wriggling toes when he tries to slip into his father’s shoes.

 

Pepper doesn’t know all of the details but she might, someday. She knows about the space between a glass and a bottle. She knows enough to hold him close when he shakes; that’s enough for now.

 

He thinks he might love her, you know?

 

But.

 

There is Tony before Ironman. And then there is isn’t.

 

See, there is no space between his wriggling toes and the smooth metal casing; the suit is his, his alone, and fits him like a second skin. Sometimes, he thinks, it fits better then his first.

 

_Playboy billionaire philanthropist_ , he says but it doesn’t taste right.

 

_Put your suit on_ —it’s not an answer because Tony wasn’t asking questions. It’s a command and he obeys.

 

The metal mask clicks shut in front of his eyes and the world opens.

 

_Big man in a suit of armor, take that away and what are you?_

You can’t.

 

Rip the glowing, robot heart out of him and the simple fact remains that he will die. There are no take-backs this time, no Tony without the humming of reactor beams and the dizzy rush of flight. There is no Tony without Ironman.

 

Pepper doesn’t know all the details, doesn’t know what it feels like when she reaches into his chest, tears streaming down her face. She talks about _before_ , with a soft little half-smile.

 

Sometimes, she talks about _after_.

 

They are TonyandPepper. But he is also IronmanandTony.

 

He doesn’t know how to fit Pepper into this newest calculation, doesn't know how to rewrite the formula for the old solution when the elements are so fundamentally different. When redheaded Pepper watches the news obsessively, even when he’s home, waiting for the next disaster to strike, trying to predict which crisis will need him next.

 

He doesn’t say, _our relationship_. It’s unfair; she’s usually right.

 

Fact is, Pepper fell in love with only half of the equation.

 

But what is a _y_ without it’s _mx + b_?


	2. part two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is Tony before Ironman. And then there is isn’t.
> 
> Rip the glowing, robot heart out of him and the simple fact remains: he will die.
> 
> He doesn’t know how to fit Pepper into this newest calculation, how to rewrite the formula for the old solution when the elements are so fundamentally different. Fact is, she fell in love with only half the equation.
> 
> (Eventual Tony/Steve.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> caesura: musical term for a complete pause in the middle of a line
> 
> fermata: musical notation that warns musicians before an imminent caesura

xxx

 

part two

 

xxx

 

There’s this moment. Yeah, that one.

 

The one he can’t stop thinking about, the one he can’t find the volume for. Everything he does is larger than life, is loud and over the top. This is the way he lives, the way he holds himself together.

 

It’s always the quiet moments that make Tony unravel.

 

The silence when he calls out in the middle of the night for something beyond explanation. It’s the breathlessness before the mask clicks into place. There’s an missed beat, an unintentional caesura where his witty comeback should be; it’s reflex by now but there is no fermata warning and he misses his cue.

 

 _Put your suit on_ —it’s not an order but he follows anyway.

 

Steve likes to watch, he thinks, his eyes admiring and curious. Tony shivers behind his defenses; the chinks of his suit ripple and slide into place. He loves the last note, the _schnick_ of opening possibilities. If he were a religious kind of man, or maybe an optimistic one, he would think of rebirth and second chances. It doesn’t matter that he isn’t because when he opens his eyes he is Ironman.

 

Steve is still watching him though.

 

 _Can I touch?_ —It’s not a question he is prepared for.

 

Pepper is waiting for him at some restaurant. There is no reason that this fact should pop into his head; he has another hour before he has to be there.

 

 _Okay_ —later he’ll wonder why.

 

It's not a request he grants, usually. See, this is the unspoiled part of Tony, the insides of him inversed into armour and it's not his reflection he sees when he looks into the polished metal surface, it's his future. Is it so selfish that he wants to keep this feeling untarnished?  

 

So why does he nod, voiceless behind his defenses instead of preparing for seige?

 

Maybe, it’s the way Steve asks, unlike the drooling groupies or the half-naked girls with their kinky fantasies. It’s not like Pepper either, with tightness in her voice. She sees no future at all, pressing harder and harder to feel the man underneath.

  

_Can I touch?_   Steve asks. Not, _Can I touch it?_

It’s this difference that sticks in his throat, that keeps him unflinching and hopeful as Steve reaches out and touches him with a gloved hand. There’s something about the sound of leather against metal, the harmony of sliding textures. Tony has the feeling of searching for a word but loses the shape of it before his mouth forms around the syllables.

 

Steve follows the curve of his suit, fingertips tracing over where his collarbone would be.

 

Logically, Tony can’t feel the fingertips through his suit. That is the point; he is untouchable. But later, under the dinner table, legs twisted deliciously with Pepper’s smooth ones, he presses a hand against the skin and it aches.

 

It’s simply a moment. Then Steve steps back and it’s over. It doesn't matter; life is full of moments.

 

Still, it’s not the color of Pepper’s dress that he remembers the next morning.

 

 

 


	3. part three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is Tony before Ironman. And then there is isn’t.
> 
> Rip the glowing, robot heart out of him and the simple fact remains: he will die.
> 
> He doesn’t know how to fit Pepper into this newest calculation, how to rewrite the formula for the old solution when the elements are so fundamentally different. Fact is, she fell in love with only half the equation.
> 
> (Eventual Tony/Steve.)

XXX

 

part three

 

XXX

 

He always thought he was a function.

 

 _Functional?_ —Pepper hiccups, the relief and the red wine going to her head. She laughs, hair tumbling over bare shoulders. He thinks, in another life, people would’ve worshipped a women like this; that might be a quote from a movie, he can’t remember. It’s been a few glass too many but when Tony tries to stop her, take the glass from tightening fingers, he can't. He watches her knuckles turn white and hates himself.

 

It’s not a heartbeat moment, not the electric shock of fingertips or the breathless seconds in between _oh_ and _kay_. It creeps in, like a rising tide. He doesn’t notice they’re treading water until pulled under the surface. But even broken, red hair shielding her face like his mask would, she fills the room. 

 

Tony kneels, like he once imagined he would all those years ago when he was just Tony, an asshole and a genius, and she was Pepper, too smart to fall for him. His hand in his coat pocket curls around a little black box. He wants to say her name, tongue twisting around the syllables before letting go, so that she will look at him and make the world less messy. She does that for him; makes it bearable, makes the air breathable.

 

He's only loud to drown it out, you know. The world only hurts when it's let in. 

 

Pepper is crying, eyelids swollen and mascara-streaked. Everything in her face puffs up when she cries, as if she was allergic to her own misery. He might be. The sight of her makes his insides shrivel up.

 

 _I can’t do this_ —Her bare shoulders tremble, voice breaking. It’s a confession, splintering and bitter, as she slips through his fingers.

 

 _Pepper_ —It aches somewhere deep inside of him, throbbing in his knees and his clenched hand around black velvet. Tony means to beg, because he’s a function and he _needs_ her, the x value to his y and who cares about m’s and b’s when she is _leaving_ him. Instead, it just sounds like a confession.

 

She calls a taxi.

 

Tony doesn’t slip the ring into her bag and it’s the most selfless thing he’s ever done.


	4. part four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is Tony before Ironman. And then there is isn’t.
> 
> Rip the glowing, robot heart out of him and the simple fact remains: he will die.
> 
> He doesn’t know how to fit Pepper into this newest calculation, how to rewrite the formula for the old solution when the elements are so fundamentally different. Fact is, she fell in love with only half the equation.
> 
> (Eventual Tony/Steve.)

xxx

 

part four

 

xxx

 

The thing about a function is that there is only one _x_ value for every given _y_.

 

Pepper leaves him.

 

It’s numbing—the silence and the spaces and his distorted reflection at the bottom of another bottle. The emptier they get, the emptier he feels. It’s like the glowing robot heart has been ripped out of his chest and when he touches the tender edges, _yes doctor it hurts right here_ , he wonders if he is too broken to fix.

 

Tony locks himself away in his suit, behind metal walls to make up for his crumbling defenses.

 

They don’t know that his jaw trembles when he clenches his teeth. They don’t know that his vision wavers black around the edges, eyes burning from self-pity and lack of sleep. They can’t tell that, underneath the iron grip, his human hands are shaking as he reaches for the next assignment. It's like checkmate and why would the losing side deserve the queen when it's over anyway? He watched Batman, he knows how this ends. Pepper leaves him but Tony is Ironman now and he needs her but the suit is needed more.

 

Maybe this is what his dad meant about maturity.

 

He thinks Steve might understand. Tony catches him watching in the moments between landing and take-off, between this crisis and that one, eyes thoughtful.

 

Captain America, more then the rest of them, must understand what it is to be a symbol. To lose the outline of yourself as other people color you in. Steve is unmistakably red, white and blue. He wonders if it was always like that, or if Steve ever ran around in shades of gray before the war.

 

Tony can picture it, but he’s always had a good imagination. Once, he had this idea. Not really an idea, more of a daydream. There’s this little girl with red hair and his eyes, learning how to fly for the first time. She’s laughing, demanding to go higher and higher, breathless with happiness and flushed cheeks. He breathes out and the picture evaporates, silence ringing where the echoes of her laughter should be.

 

 _Tony_ —the interruption is only a little unwelcome. He can’t remember when they started using each other’s first names. Steve is only Captain on the battlefield now; mostly he even follows orders. He argues, but that’s just because it’s fun.

_You look terrible_ —the surprise is enough to make Tony look up. He’s in full suit; how would Steve know?

 

Before he can ask, Steve’s hand slips around his iron wrist.

 

His first reflex is to throw a punch. He is only ever touched in battle now, grabbed and thrown and smashed. Tony tries to remember the last time he’s pressed skin to skin, the last time he’s felt a beating pulse or the heat of another body. He knows the answer because he's a genius and numbers are his things and would you like that in weeks or days or bottles?

 

 _Your fists clench when you’re tired_ —Steve presses gently on the joints of his metal knuckles, flattening Tony’s hand out against his own palm. Like a thrown switch, the tension evaporates, leaving him with slumped shoulders and weak knees.

 

He thinks this might be one of those moments again, discourteously quiet, fermata-less, dangerous.

 

Steve lowers him into a chair, sensing the cut strings and trembling jaw. Maybe he has all along.

 

Tony means to say something, to say _thank you_ but when he closes his eyes, the space behind his eyelids is too wonderfully, invitingly dark. He falls asleep, tumbling into the dream gracelessly with the familiar weightlessness of free-fall.

 

He dreams about chemical equations and the domino effect of the basic chain rule, overthrowing all of his most solid facts.

 

The next morning, Tony wakes up in his own bed.


	5. part 5

xxx

 

part five

 

xxx

 

Tony is eleven, when he stops trying to impress his father.

 

A simple miss-wired connection, too simple for him to have missed it but he does. There’s no particular reason why he messed up that day, nothing but bad luck and a touch of arrogance. Or maybe, eagerness. His father has agreed to take the afternoon off to inspect his newest experiment, for a private unveiling, the very first time foreign eyes are allowed to observe.

 

It’s sleek machine, a prototype designed for refueling tanks under heavy fire.

 

His father says nothing as he explains the mechanics, the way the equations string together like Christmas lights, illuminating, impressive, but the severity of his mouth loosens, almost to the point of praise.

 

Then Tony flipped the switch and it shudder and dies.

 

Tony doesn’t watch his father leave but when the door closes he throws his work into the wall and burns the blueprints.  He thinks about becoming an artist for three weeks, doesn’t touch a single tool, doesn’t fix a single broken appliance, not even the butler’s watch that ticks too slow between noon and midnight until it’s rewound. His mother orders him a set of watercolor, seeming pleased.

 

But he’s too selfish for that kind of spite and he finds that all his self-portraits become blue-prints anyway.

 

The watercolors are still tucked away in storage, unopened, where Tony keeps all the items that are uncomfortably reminiscent of his childhood. He might have a baseball glove in there too, but that’s another unfortunate story.

 

On his birthday, Steve discovers a set of watercolors, sender unknown.

 

He smiles at Tony across the breakfast table, anyway.


End file.
